Chapter Text
“Where’s the girl?” snarls the stick-thin man trying to back Castiel into a corner of the chaotic living room.
“Don’t know,” Castiel replies, tightening his grip on his angel blade. His grace might be too shaky to reliably smite the demons, but he’s still an angel and has Sam, Dean, Mary, and his angel blade in his corner, so these demons are just about as much of a threat as every other gang looking for Kelly Kline. It’s still not a good idea to let himself get cornered, though, so he lunges, taking the offensive to force the demon back and on the defensive.
“Right, right,” the demon scoffs. “Every time some shit like this happens, it’s always the Winchesters in the middle of it. As if you don’t know where the bitch and her spawn are.”
If Castiel has to listen to demonic posturing for one more second, he might just shove his blade through his own brain. He feints forward, darts to the side when the demon leaps away to dodge, and he’s just about to take advantage of the demon’s fallen guard to slide his blade home when the demon stiffens and throws his head back, screaming in hellish synchrony with the other demons in the room. Black smoke pours out of their mouths and is yanked down, straight through the ground, back to Hell.
Castiel pauses. He frowns at Dean, who’s now next to him and looking just as perplexed as Castiel feels. Sam and Mary, across the ransacked living room, lower their guns and turn to stare at Castiel and Dean.
“Did you –?” Dean says.
“No,” Castiel says. “I thought you did.”
“None of us did an exorcism,” Sam says, his brow furrowed. “I mean, it looked kind of like how we exorcised Lucifer, but none of us have that thing. Right?”
“Nope,” Mary says, holding her hands up when Dean frowns at her. “I don’t have any Men of Letters gear, I swear.”
“Then what –?”
Before Dean can finish his sentence, Castiel gasps and falls to his knees as his grace is yanked suddenly and violently. Dean immediately cries out and falls next to Castiel, whose very essence is being sharply tugged towards his mouth, as though someone has stuck a hook through his heart and is reeling him out of his vessel.
“Cas!” Dean’s voice sounds faraway, his face distorted, like Castiel is underwater. “Cas, what’s wrong?”
“I –” Castiel groans and curls in on himself. Dimly, he registers that he’s gritting his teeth – his vessel’s teeth – mouth hot, burning, trying to contain him, a creature of magnitudes and dimensions – he coughs and scorching grace claws its way up his throat, digging itself into the oesophageal muscle, forcing retches as though he can vomit up his own essence –
“Whatever exorcised the demons must be affecting Cas too!” Sam’s voice barely penetrates the ringing in Castiel’s ears. A bolt of very real fear lances through Castiel. Will he survive being exorcised when this is more of a body than a vessel? When it’s just him in here? With his grace as fickle as it is? And if he does survive and end up in Heaven, after everything he’s done, every angel he’s killed or ruled over…what then? What if he’s trapped there, kept as a pawn to use against the Winchesters, weaponised against them even without the brainwashing that had died with Naomi?
“No, no, no!” Dean’s face enters Castiel’s field of view as his head is yanked back, like someone’s grabbed him by the hair and pulled. “Cas, stay with us, you hear me?”
“Dean –”
“No! It’ll kill him, Sam, he couldn’t even survive if I’d banished him with Ishim!”
“Dean,” Castiel croaks. Dean’s attention immediately snaps back to him, allowing Castiel to make a last effort to save the man he loves, just as back in the barn while Ramiel bore down on them. “Go. Whatever this is – might – hurt you –”
“No way,” Dean says immediately. “I’m not leaving you, Cas.”
The fear that shoots through Castiel now is even deeper, more primal, than the fear of possibly dying. If he’s going to die, there’s not a chance in Heaven or Hell that he’s taking Dean with him, and he has to make Dean understand, make him see –
“I’m not – letting you get hurt,” Castiel grits out. He gags when another sharp tug on his grace forces him into his mouth and his vision blurs, loses focus and starts to darken as his control over his body is severed. He’s still keenly aware of Dean clutching at him, as though Dean could just squeeze him back into his body through sheer force of will, and he loves Dean all the more for trying.
There’s nothing but the ringing of his true form for a few desperate moments as he loses control over his hearing. Then, clear as a bell, Dean’s voice cuts through the white noise, praying desperately.
Yes, Cas. I’m saying yes. Please, you gotta get in me –
Castiel violently shakes his head…or rather, the animal heads of his true form, as he can’t even move his body’s muscles anymore. No. Not a chance. He won’t subject Dean to the torment of playing host to an angel, especially when he fought so hard to avert his destiny as Michael’s true vessel. But then Dean’s voice takes on a note of hysteria that’s so unlike him, so out of his usual modus operandi of burying everything even resembling feelings, and Castiel can’t help the way he sways towards Dean as he begins to seep out of his body, unable to resist the exorcism any longer.
Dammit, Cas, I know you’re gonna be a martyr about it but don’t – you can’t die, you can’t, not when I’m sayin’ yes. Just get in here and we’ll figure somethin’ out, but we can’t do that if you fucking die!
Dean’s voice cracks on the last word of his prayer, and he sounds so painfully, openly desperate that Castiel’s will cracks. Right as the last of him pours out of his body, before he’s dispersed into the universe to face his fate and roll the dice on his survival, he surges towards the light of Dean’s soul. It’s warm, welcoming, brilliantly incandescent, and Castiel curls around it as he streams into Dean’s mouth, embracing the beautiful light to cushion it and remove as much spiritual stress as he possibly can.
He doesn’t take over. Instead, he keeps Dean in control as he flows through his stomach and intestines like he’s a meal that Dean had just desperately consumed. He seeps through the intestinal walls, allows his grace to mingle with the tiniest blood cells as he’s pumped through Dean’s body, spreading heavenly light through every part of Dean Winchester from the very last cell of his little toe to the deepest depths of the medulla that keeps him alive with every breath and heartbeat.
Oh. He thought he’d loved Dean before, after having cradled his soul out of Hell and existing in his light for years after like the Earth orbiting the Sun. But he hadn’t truly known what love was until now. Not until being given permission to wrap himself around Dean Winchester, swaying into his light like he’s a lizard basking in the warm sun.
Dean’s soul swirls around and within Castiel at the same time, simultaneously a separate entity and an extension of Castiel in this new body. Good. Many angels had engulfed their host’s soul, not absorbing it but quashing it, treating it as a foreign object in its own body. Castiel had been one of them, shamefully, until God had brought him back without Jimmy’s soul and his vessel had been solely his. But he’s not going to do that to Dean. He’s a guest in Dean’s body, not an armed intruder, and he’d sooner die than do anything to stifle Dean’s autonomy.
The soul in question had been neutral white but it now turns pale, questioning blue as Dean starts to regain consciousness. Wrapped around Dean’s optical nerves, Castiel watches through his friend’s eyes as Dean jolts upright and, ignoring Sam and Mary’s concerned exclamations, scrambles over to Castiel’s crumpled body.
“Cas,” Dean babbles, pulling Castiel’s body around onto its back. The head lolls, eyes closed, mouth open, and Dean’s breath hitches as he reaches out with a shaky hand and cradles the cheek, and it’s odd to watch from this perspective but Castiel can’t dwell on that when Dean’s working himself into a panic; breathing shallow, heart racing, amygdala preparing to begin the adrenal response. The seven years since Jimmy’s death is barely the blink of an eye to an angel, but it feels like an eternity since the last time Castiel had cohabited a body with a soul and felt the physical sensations of the body with the detachment of a soul buffer as he’s experiencing now.
“Dean?” Sam says from behind them. Dean lets out a strange, strangled sound.
“Cas,” he croaks. In response, Castiel lights up his grace, just enough that Dean should feel a pleasant warmth throughout his body, and he’s rewarded with Dean whipping his head around to stare over his shoulder at Sam and Mary, who look to be a mix of despairing and puzzled.
Hello, Dean.